Imagine being a former Scottish steel worker and watching your community being brought to its knees in the 1980s by Thatcherite economic policies.

Imagine, despite all that, you found new work and educated your kids to degree level so they became proud middle-class citizens who remember their roots and hold on to your own socialist values.

Transport these circumstances to industrial France and next year that former steel worker will have to ask himself and his grown-up children to vote for a Thatcherite in order to keep the far-right Front National out of the highest office in the land.

Despite a reputation for a habitually striking public sector workforce, the left in France, as in Britain, is impotent.

Nigel Farage reacts as he poses with newly-elected leader of the UK Independence Party (Image: Getty)

The right-wing Francois Fillion, an unrepentant Thatcher fan, is the only hope. He would dismantle labour laws that protect workers’ rights. The workers, if they don’t want Le Pen as president, are hostage to him,